Now it is set to fetch between £1,000 and £1,500 in the Rare and Important Travel Posters sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on Thursday.

The part of Northern Ireland featured in the poster is not known, but the peace and tranquillity conveyed by the image must have been enticing for anyone wanting to escape the horrors of war.

In the early and mid-20th century, when few people owned cars, British railway companies commissioned artists to produce colourful, eye-catching posters of seaside resorts, beauty spots and places of historical interest in a bid to boost rail travel.

In recent years these posters, which once adorned and brightened railway station platforms and waiting rooms, have become increasingly sought-after and valuable mementoes of the gentler, sadly vanished steam era.

Eric Hesketh Hubbard, who designed the poster, was born in Clapham, London, on November 16, 1892. He died in April 1957.

In 2008, another railway poster advertising a dramatic painting of Dunluce Castle went under the hammer at Christie's. The poster sold for £2,000 - double what it had been expected to fetch.